President Barack Obama startled handicappers by selecting Dartmouth President Jim Yong Kim as the U.S. candidate to lead the World Bank rather than the reported front-runner Larry Summers, Obama’s former National Economic Council director.
The Korean-born Kim is a medical doctor, anthropologist, and MacArthur fellow, best known for his pioneering work to fight HIV and tuberculosis in the Third World. Kim helped develop treatments for drug-resistant TB, and then successfully pushed to reduced the cost of anti-TB drugs. He is close associate of Dr. Paul Farmer, the lead founder of Partners in Health and subject of Tracy Kidder’s 2003 book, Mountains Beyond Mountains.
While Third World leaders had pushed for an alternative to Summers, Kim was a total surprise. The appointment is a two-fer in the sense that it gives the job both to an American and to an Asian, as well as a welcome breakthrough in that the presidency goes to someone with on-the-ground work fighting poverty and disease as opposed to an international dignitary or economist.
Jeffrey Sachs, who audaciously threw his own hat into the ring, can take some credit for this surprise choice, since his own move created some pressure for Obama to think outside the box. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was also reportedly favorable to the Kim selection. For Summers, this ends a winning streak of falling upwards.

This is an interesting pick. I’m wary of Summers as are many, but if some rudimentary knowledge of economics isn’t required for this position, I guess I’ll go see a plumber the next time I need a TB test.

I remember seeing him about to fall out of his chair laughing in the video of Conan O’Brian’s commencement address at Dartmouth. Nice to see it go to someone qualified, who also has a sense of humor. I suspect he’ll need it.

A good choice. Who knows what will happen to Kim’s agenda after it is put up against some of World Bank customs. But may lead to more emphasis by World Bank on investment in social capital, rather than traditional big international capital investment projects. The World Bank has already moved in the right direction, a little bit at least. Maybe Kim can push it further.

I have stayed in some posh World Bank ‘investment projects’ while at international meetings. I can see why a certain sort of traveling important type of person (who does not want to wrassal with local traditions in, say, accommodations or bathroom design) would be impressed with them, but too much emphasis on them rather than social investment that addresses local problems that prevent human capital and development (eg, endemic disease, shortage of small capital to locals, or lack of access to education or health services.)

Unlike three of the last four World Bank presidents, he’s not a banker. Unlike both of the Bush administration’s picks, he’s not a diplomat or an old foreign policy hand. Unlike every other named candidate for the position — Jeffrey Sachs, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and Jose Antonio Ocampo — he’s not an economist or economic policymaker. He is, in other words, a new direction for the World Bank.
Which fits, because the World Bank’s priorities are changing. As development expert Todd Moss explains, India, one of the bank’s largest fund recipients, is about to grow its way out of the International Development Association, the arm of the bank that primarily serves the world’s poorest countries. A host of others — including Vietnam, Ghana, Nigeria and Mongolia — are scheduled to follow soon after.
As incomes in these countries rise, they need less help from the bank. So resources will shift to those countries that haven’t been able to take advantage of rising global prosperity. Nearly all of those 30 or so extremely low-income nations are fragile, post-conflict zones in Sub-Saharan Africa. And their needs are substantially different from those of rapidly developing countries like India.

A skim of the Wikipedia article on the World Bank leads me to believe that it’s supposed to be focused on development, not economics per se. In fact, a lot of the criticism of the WB seems to be because the Washington Consensus focused too much on the metrics economists love like GDP and not enough on things like roads and clean water that were supposed to be its mission.

So this nomination sounds like it’s supposed to be a signal that the US is more interested in helping developing countries build infrastructure than in looting their pension funds.

I was rooting for Jeffrey Sachs. I like that guy a lot, but it looks like he played a role so yeah, it’s good that there was some out of the box thinking. Maybe Summers can go back to being the scourge of the Winklevii and leave us poor science-challenged women alone.

So for all those who “feared” it would be Larry Summers for even though from my understanding no one from the Admin said it would be, it was just a village meme am I right, will POTUS get any credit from certain spheres of the intertubes for an “out of the box” and yet “kinda perfect” pick?

Between this and the measured yet pitch-perfect response to the Trayvon Martin question and the shock of these SYC laws…at the very least it should make people realize that elections DO ave consequences!

@Kay: agreed. they just read the headline.
@rlrr: i asked one of the senders that question. no response yet. i’m guessing the usual “no practical experience” trope. which is easily disproven if they read the article.

So for all those who “feared” it would be Larry Summers for even though from my understanding no one from the Admin said it would be, it was just a village meme am I right, will POTUS get any credit from certain spheres of the intertubes for an “out of the box” and yet “kinda perfect” pick?

@Lawnguylander: No, he was still right that for the bank’s customers a non-Washington-insider would be a better choice. That’s been the main point of his series of posts on the subject. He cited Ngozi as the best of the candidates that people were talking about.

I think the important point is that Obama was going to so totally pick Summers (because you can tell what he’s thinking, you know), but the Prog Front wrote so many outraged blog posts and tweets that Obama just had to back down. So victory.

Except now we know that he’s just pushing Kim out there to see him fail, so any failure to secure the nomination is Obama’s fault too. And if he does get the nomination, he’s going to be pressured and co-opted by the administration so any deviation from Prog Front desires is Obama’s fault too.

Personally, this is probably a good direction for the World Bank, but I don’t know anything about the guy really and I don’t know how healthy it would be for yet another American to get the job.

The World Bank has always had a mandate for development, rather than financial shenanigans, which is more the IMF’s territory.

But for a long time the WB believed the economic CW that effective development policies required big investments in big projects that attracted foreign dollars and led to fast growth in exports. So, that lead to lot of big corporate projects. Not nearly enough emphasis on smaller scale projects that lead to development from the bottom up.

I don’t think Kim’s name even came up in Salmon’s article. I’d be interested to see if he does a follow-up now that a candidate’s name is known since all of the ones he was speculating about were the Village-approved names like Summers and Sachs.

Looks like a great pick to me. While he isn’t an economist, he’s well-versed in the machinations of the international development community, and with his experience there’s an outside chance that he can achieve the unachievable: making the World Bank work in concert with the other multilateral development and trade organizations, rather than veering of in its own desired directions, coherent policy be damned.

This is good/bad news for me, because I am professionally exposed to Larry Summers far more often than anybody should have to be, and if he went to the World Bank, he might stop doing business with my firm. Probably not though. I’m afraid he’s a lifelong affliction. But I’m glad at least he won’t be the World Bank’s affliction.

Also, too, I have to admit I’m enjoying picturing Summers’ probable reaction upon being told, “Sorry, Larry, but we’ve decided to go with a college president. No, a current college president. Look, we decided to go with someone else, okay?”

(I can’t remember what movie that’s from, where the character keeps protesting that he has the same qualifications, only to be told in exasperation that they went with someone else.)

I think the important point is that Obama was going to so totally pick Summers (because you can tell what he’s thinking, you know), but the Prog Front wrote so many outraged blog posts and tweets that Obama just had to back down. So victory.

Yeah, I don’t think I agree with him. He thinks that an economist/banker should still be the head even though the policies that economists and bankers at the World Bank proposed ended up being pretty disastrous for actual development in the third world (as opposed to the rent-seeking “development” of churning financial markets that the Washington Consensus encouraged).

If the plan is to re-direct the World Bank back to encouraging and financing infrastructure in developing countries rather than growing their GDP, I think Kim may be a better choice than the economists and bankers that Salmon prefers.

If the plan is to re-direct the World Bank back to encouraging and financing infrastructure in developing countries rather than growing their GDP, I think Kim may be a better choice than the economists and bankers that Salmon prefers.

As in doing the grassroots spadework in development, as opposed to the top down modes of economists?

This is a great choice. Partners in Health, which Dr. Kim helped found with Dr. Paul Farmer, is one of the best charities around (esp. in Haiti). And, Farmer and Partners in Health believe that healthcare is as much an issue of social justice as it is an issue of delivery. So Glenn Beck should be blowing a gasket any moment now.

@Mnemosyne: To clarify: this is not a US cabinet or equivalent position. It has to be approved by the World Bank’s executive board, only. And I can’t imagine for a second that Obama would have nominated him if he weren’t already sure that the votes are there.

Also, too, I’m just going by Wikipedia, but it sounds like the original mandate of the World Bank was more of a grassroots thing. Developing countries would come to the WB and say, “We’d like you to loan us money to build some roads and schools, and for mosquito abatement to reduce malaria” and the WB would examine the proposal to see if it was viable. The IMF was supposed to be the institution that was looking at the overall economic health of the country and concentrating on things like GDP. The World Bank was supposed to be financing infrastructure.

But then, as they did here in the US, the neocons and free marketeers pounced when they spotted free money being given to people who would spend it on roads and schools and not complicated financial instruments, so they convinced DLCers like Clinton that the World Bank should have essentially the same mission as the IMF.

I could very well be talking out of my ass here, so anyone who knows better should feel free to correct me.

While a student at Harvard Medical School, Kim co- founded Partners in Health, a nonprofit organization that hasopened clinics in countries including Haiti and Peru. Kim, while working for the group in Peru in the mid-1990s, helped develop a treatment program for multidrug-resistant tuberculosis.

Paul Wolfowitz, [ supporter of wars based on lies,] and a former deputy secretary of defense in the administration of George W. Bush , who resigned under pressure in 2007 after giving his companion an unusually large pay raise and promotion.

@Mnemosyne: I think he really had his heart set on Ngozi, so he’s being a tad sour. And while Ngozi is an economist with a history at the WB, I don’t think she is cut off from the on-the-ground issues of development.

I think Kim is a good pick, and probably the best pick Obama could make that wouldn’t upset Congress and jeopardize funding. Unfortunately, an African female would just not have gone over well with the cretins currently running the show in the House.

This is a stellar nomination. For anyone here who hasn’t read Tracy Kidder’s Mountains Beyond Mountains, I can’t recommend it highly enough. I’ve been donating yearly to Partners in Health from the moment I closed the book. And anyone who would doubt Dr. Kim’s ability to deal with the issues facing the World Bank and it’s committment to underdeveloped nations because he’s an “academic” is really selling Dr. Kim short. He might be president of Dartmouth now, but his life is a testament to actually committing yourself to difficult work and getting things done. I’m glad Kim was willing to take the job, but get ready to see wingnuts go after Kim and Paul Farmer with a vengeance.

I’d say with his background this guy probably has at least a rudimentary knowledge of economics. Considering Summers’ and Wolfowitz’s records of epic fail and general assholery, I can’t see how Kim could possibly do any worse….

@Martin: IMO what we get from the Villagers, conventional or un-, deserves to be referred to derisively as “whizzdumb“. It’s more descriptive of what actually underlies their pronouncements. (NB number of z’s can be varied according to mood & sleep deficit.)

OK, mea culpa. I went to Dartmouth. If you can handle the raging factions of rich snobby alums, frat boys resenting the loss of their male privilege (which group may or may not have included me at some point), academicians and a student body that has gotten remarkably diverse since he took over… World Bank should be cake.

I also read Mountains Beyond Mountains and what I remember is that he grew exasperated by Farmer’s purity at times. Kim wanted to do the most for the most, rather than all for some. That’s why he led the way in Peru with antibiotic resistant TB.

Frankly, as an alum, I’m sad to lose the first really inspired and inspiring president we’ve had up in Hangover, but heartened for the World Bank.

The World Bank isn’t lacking in economists, and the directorship is an inherently political job.

So why did Villagers think it would go to Summers in the first place? As an economist, he’d possibly be duplicating skills that already exist on the staff, and as a politician, he’s harder to work with than Attila the Hun.

It wasn’t that he didn’t know who Obama would nominate. Admitting he had no idea at all would have been the honest thing to write, but it wouldn’t have been very Savvy so we can’t have that. It was the crap about Summers and Clinton that was crap. Just because his analysis was coming from many of his readers would see as a more righteous perspective doesn’t make it any less wrong.

It’s actually an inspired choice. One of the key economic issues facing many developing countries, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa is health, namely the infection of large percentages of their working age populations and children with HIV and TB. This imposes massive costs on families, society and the meager resources at the nations’ disposal. It also depletes valuable human capital.

I’m also fairly confident that a man with a doctorate in Anthropology and a long history of working in global health has a sizable amount of experience with the economics of the developing world and is intimately acquainted with the tools and methodologies of economists.

@ericblair: They probably have no clue who this guy was/is, and I bet neither did you before today. Like anyone else, I am sure they are just happy Larry Summers wasn’t picked, if they care anything at all about this appointment.

Fantastic choice – he helped co-found Partners in Health and did some amazing work in Haiti and Peru (and now they’re also in Rwanda). I always liked Jim Kim and Paul Farmer’s philosophy of having *a preferential option for the poor*. I believe he worked for the WHO before heading out to Dartmouth, so he does have some experience with diplomacy of sorts.

This is really bad news, because by a process of elimination it more or less forces Obama to go with Larry Summers.

That seems pretty straight forward to me. Obama was not forced to go with Larry Summers. The speculation about Hillary Clinton was just silly, but there he might have been fucking around and making fun of other people who were publicly pushing her for the job. I’m not sure.

I have been working for more than 30 years in the developing world; more than half of my life has been spent there. My field is environment but this sluices into health at many levels. I’m also an economist and I am sick and tired of seeing bankers proposed to these positions. Yes, Wolfowitz was not a banker; he was a NeoCon asshole. Neither was McNamara, who despite his terrible Vietnam legacy was the best WB President, ever, ardently pro-poor, actually a radical by today’s very diminished standards.

My question about this out-of-the-box choice is will he be up to the challenge of managing a really mammoth bureaucracy, albeit one that aspires to be a real meritocracy. This is not a university or an NGO.

I wish him all the best and hope he’s got a really solid team backing him up.

Comments are closed.

Get Involved!

It takes just 5 minutes, twice a week:

Make a call
Send an email
Send a postcard or fax
Make your voice heard!

For both local and national numbers, recommended scripts and approaches: